Modern networks are responsible for interconnecting computing devices operable to exchange data. Data may be exchanged from circuit board to circuit board along a common backplane, for example, in a computer or server. In some implementations, data may be exchanged over long distances, for example, from a travel agent's computer to an airline server on a cloud network. Modern networks may employ a number of mediums including physical wires, radio frequency (RF) channels or fiber optics. Data exchanged between computing devices may include data packets including multiple bits. In some network implementations, the bits may be transmitted and received simultaneously. Such communication may be known as parallel and may include multiple parallel connections known as a bus. In some implementations, data may be transmitted one bit at a time, or serially.
Given a common signal frequency, serial data communication is slower than parallel communication since with serial communication each bit is transmitted individually, and in parallel communication a group of bits are communicated simultaneously in sequential time slices. However, as communication signal frequencies increase (and time slices decrease), bit transit times may become a significant factor causing challenges for simultaneous data arrival times in parallel data implementations. Since serial transmission implementations transmit data one bit at a time, there is inherently no simultaneous data. This aspect of serial transmission may allow data to be transmitted at higher signaling frequencies. Accordingly, network designers may trade off various advantages and disadvantages of parallel versus serial data transmission for specific applications.